Description
This gentle, pastoral prelude in E major is the ninth piece of Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Book I, written out in fair copy in 1722, moves through every major and minor key a semitone at a time.
It is in E major and 12/8. Within the slow sway of 12/8, the upper voice traces a singing melody while the inner voice and bass accompany it gently. Written mainly in three voices, it relies less on dramatic contrast than on the soft movement of its harmony. Its range runs from E2 to B5, within a 61-key keyboard.
Rated intermediate, it lasts about 1 minute 29 seconds with 423 notes in this data, one of the lower note counts among the Book I preludes. There is no difficulty of speed; the task is the balance of volume, letting the upper melody sing while the inner voice and bass stay soft. Feeling the broad sway of 12/8 matters too. Check how the voices are divided with the hand colours, and slow the playback a little to listen to the melody alone, and you will find clues for how to make it sing.
Bach's collection of preludes and fugues for keyboard, covering all 24 keys and regarded as the summit of contrapuntal writing.
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Sheet music provided by Mutopia Project
About the Composer
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Johann Sebastian Bach was the towering figure of German Baroque music, serving for decades as Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Renowned for his mastery of counterpoint, he laid the foundations of keyboard music with works such as The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions. This site includes minuets and polonaises from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, the Inventions and Sinfonias, and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier. The Notebook pieces are catalogued with BWV Anh. (appendix) numbers, but many are by other composers - Petzold's minuets among them - or by no one known, and most of their song pages give the current view of who wrote them.
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